


"be yourself"

by pipecleanerFlowers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipecleanerFlowers/pseuds/pipecleanerFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bourbon. The lonely man’s drink. The drink of jaded double-oh sevens and exhausted chasers of love.</p><p>Kaito stares at it with dead eyes. “Make it a double.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	"be yourself"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunwukong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunwukong/gifts).



> I'm so sorry bao I love you

Alit’s seen a lot of things in his time as a bartender. He’s seen bar fights and drunk men trying (failing) to hit up cute girls. He’s seen at least a hundred different ways to write a number down. He’s seen Mizael be mistaken for a girl on more than one occasion, and he’s seen Kaito chaperone for Yuma’s  chaotic eighteenth birthday (in which Vector started a brawl that almost split the counter in two and accidentally almost set the place on fire with the flares of his cigarettes. Good times).

But out of everything put together, Alit has seen more broken-hearts than he wants to admit.

He leans against the counter, one elbow propped up as he dries shot glasses. “What’s up with you two? You look like death.”

Mizael barely raises his head at the words, too busy cradling a tall cocktail between shaking hands. Kaito just keeps staring at his drink, eyes so focused that Alit expects the glass to implode.

“We wanted to… ask you something,” Mizael finally says with some difficulty. Kaito nods beside him, a minute gesture that Alit almost misses.

“Shoot, what do you need?”

“It’s something that unfortunately only you can help us with,” Kaito mutters gravely. “We need you to be one-hundred percent serious.”

“This is no laughing matter,” Mizael adds.

“... Ohhh kay? What’s up? I’m here for you, guys. Bros and all that,” Alit says, attempting to cheer up the mood with a smile. They both glare at him. He shrinks back. “So. Uhm. What’s your question?”

They look at each other, doubt crossing their faces along with disbelief and resignation. Finally, Kaito nods and Mizael takes the fall.

“How do we get our…” Mizael pauses and takes a breath, as if he’s bracing himself. “Our  _ crushes _ to like us?”

It sounds so high school, so shojo-esque and immature for the likes of them, but Alit would rather not be the one imploded by Kaito’s intense eyes or choked by the hands Mizael has wrapped tightly around his glass, so he refrains from commenting.

“Uhm,” he says, with all the seriousness of a trusted bartender whose answer could mean the success or failure of the love lives of two twenty-somethings. “You could be yourself?”

(It’s excellent advice, the words Alit lives by when it comes to relationships, but neither seem impressed, lips downturned as their eyes shift back to their drinks.)

“That was a terrible idea,” Kaito says. “Why did you think Alit could help us? He’s never even successfully gotten someone to date him.”

“He watches romcoms religiously, I figured they’d have taught him something at least.” Mizael frowns. “Disappointing.”

Alit fades into the background, shot through the heart by his fake friends.

~

_ Be yourself _ .

Kaito scoffs, staring across the lab to see Chris tapping away at one of the keyboards, checking stats on planetary movement through the cosmos and wondering why he had to fall for an older guy. It was so much easier impressing younger people (like Yuma, who constantly yelled COOL in his ears every time Kaito knew something that he didn’t).

It was hard to look cool in front of a guy who was nothing less than a mentor with three masters and a Ph.D.

_ Be yourself. _

It repeats in his head like a mantra of stupidity. If courting someone was that damn easy, shouldn’t he have Chris on his knees begging for his hand right now? Or anyone for that matter? Be yourself. What a load of--

“Hey Kaito, are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“You’ve been staring at the same equation for ten minutes.”

Kaito blinks, eyes refocusing on the stack of papers in front of him. “Oh,” he responds intelligently.

“Want to go for some coffee? You look like you need some.”

He nods, getting up and promptly tripping over Orbital 7’s hibernation pod. His burning face hits the floor and he wants to sink into it and disappear. Chris has the audacity to laugh, and though Kaito likes the sound of it, it’s not exactly welcome right now. Not at all.

“You must be pretty exhausted,” Chris says. “Here, I’ll get it myself. Why don’t you take a break?”

“Okay,” Kaito says, feebly attempting to push himself off the cold, hard ground. “Thanks.”

The door clicks shut behind him. Kaito wants to die.

_ Be yourself _ .

It repeats in his head, mocking him as he wonders where Orbital 7 even went.

~

_ Be yourself _ .

Mizael thinks about this. He thinks about it a lot. And decides that Durbe has known him forever, but they’ve only been human for a couple of years. Humans are different. They soft and squishy and weird and Mizael still isn’t used to it, doesn’t embrace it as much as Durbe does. But humans are different, and that means things have changed. He’s not the same as when they were in the Barian world with armoured skin and thick masks.

_ Be yourself _ .

Mizael barely even knows what that means. A lot has changed, they’ve had time to grow, he’s a different person and so is Durbe (but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still been pining for centuries, and that he hasn’t actually had the chance to act on those feelings until now).

After laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, pondering over Alit’s advice, Mizael decides to fuck it and just get up already. Problems weren’t going to solve themselves. He wasn’t going to court Durbe into liking him by sleeping in (or maybe he could… wait. No. That’s stupid).

It’s ten in the morning and Durbe is on the couch, coffee beside him on the table, newspaper in his hands, Vector sleeping soundly next to him.

“Morning, Durbe--”

Durbe hushes him, finger to his lips as he points to Vector and then continues reading the newspaper.

Mizael huffs out a sigh and heads into the kitchen, wondering when the hell Vector will stop being around long enough that they can actually have a conversation (because it’s been a week since Vector decided he needed to consume all of Durbe’s time for god knows why and Mizael’s thirsty).

Mizael stares at the contents of their fridge, almost empty because Vector apparently needs to inhale all their food like a freak vacuum, and decides to make eggs. He clangs the pots and pans loudly while grabbing the frying pan out of spite.

Durbe’s hush is so loud that Gilag probably heard it upstairs through his snores.

_ Be yourself _ .

Mizael cracks one of the eggs, pretending it’s Vector’s head. If he was truly himself, he probably would’ve murdered him already. Durbe wouldn’t be impressed.

Well, Alit’s advice was a dud.

~

Coffee does not help Kaito navigate his usual labwork. He’s on his sixth mug this hour, hands clutching it tightly as he scans over reports he can barely focus on when Chris is hovering over his shoulder, talking in his ear about adjustments to their star charts.

His voice is nice, Kaito thinks. He wants to describe it, but he can’t without admitting that maybe he’s a little in too deep with this… crush (ugh, how he hates the juvenile term).

Chris pauses for a moment and Kaito wonders if suddenly he’s developed the ability to read minds (impossible, he corrects himself, but not before panicking for one whole pathetic moment).

“Are you okay? Doesn’t look like coffee was the right choice,” Chris says, straightening up behind him. “Maybe you should lay off it?”

Kaito’s hands are trembling with an overdose of caffeine and he can feel a twitch starting in his left eye. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t regret the coffee. He instead takes the next ten minutes to regret agreeing to sharing a lab with the most beautiful person he’s ever had the audacity to lay eyes on.

~

Weekends suck.

Mizael decided this fact early on in his human life, because it meant being home with everyone. Including Durbe, which was pretty great, but everyone was always grabbing for his attention (whether it was Vector being a douche, or Alit begging him to help him study, or Ryoga trying and failing to rekindle their ancient friendship in the modern world).

How did Durbe get so damn popular anyway? Didn’t anyone realize he was (unofficially) Mizael’s? Jeeeeeez.

But now they were all in the human equivalent of looking about twenty-something and school was no longer in the equation (except for Alit). This meant they had jobs.

Weekends suck because when Vector finally lets Durbe go, he leaves for work.

Mizael scowls at the blank TV, wishing he was still in university so he could at least pass time writing mind-numbing essays instead of listening to Alit complain about his.

~

Lunch happens. That’s all Kaito really can say about it.

It’s too embarrassing to recount the rest. So Orbital 7 will on his behalf.

… after he’s done recharging.

~

Mizael feels like a goddamn housewife. It’s not that bad of a feeling, since he wanted to cook today anyway, but Durbe had mentioned a dish before he’d left for his dull job, and Mizael felt like welcoming him home with it would be cute.

Like in a domestic shojo. Not that he watched them. Because he didn’t.

“Oh, Miza! You’re cooking?” Rio’s head pops into the kitchen. “Smells delicious!”

“I hope so. It’s dinner.”

Yeah, that was the problem with living with multiple people. Mizael had long since ditched the idea of ever having a romantic dinner with Durbe when cooking involved making dishes for more than two.

Sigh.

This mansion was more of a curse than a blessing nowadays.

~

It’s almost time to close up the lab, and Kaito is thankful he even survived the day. He’s been distracted (because Chris has nice hair and nice eyes and a nice voice and nice hands and nice--).

Basically Chris is ruining his life and this has been the worst lab day since the last worst lab day (yesterday, not that Kaito will admit it).

Honestly, he just needs a drink.

~

Vector eats half the pot of curry. Mizael’s not sure how he did this in the five minutes he decided to leave the kitchen, but he did it.

Mizael reigns in his urge to smash his stupid face through the window.

There goes his (slight-not-really) romantic dinner plans.

~

“You guys look like hell.”

The bar is quiet, but steady, and Alit sets their usual drinks in front of his two troubled friends.

Mizael glares at Alit. Kaito barely has the energy to.

“Uhm…” Alit backs away even though there is a thick counter separating them. “So, uh, wanna talk about it?”

“I hate living with you guys,” Mizael says shortly.

“Chris is a demon,” Kaito adds.

“Your advice is terrible.”

“It’s the worst.”

“Got anything better?”

Alit slowly shakes his head, wondering when they got so in sync with each other.

**Author's Note:**

> i regret a lot of things


End file.
